


It's All Greek

by perrysian



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fantasy, Alternate Universe - Greek Mythology, F/M, Greek and Roman Mythology - Freeform, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-21
Updated: 2013-12-21
Packaged: 2018-01-05 08:33:41
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1091818
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/perrysian/pseuds/perrysian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Cosette is married to a mystery, and a monster ravages her city. Marius is determined to rescue her, but Fantine has her own plans in the works.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's All Greek

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ecrituredelafangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ecrituredelafangirl/gifts).



The wedding is a private, near silent affair. Cosette’s father holds onto her for several minutes after, under the heavy eyes of her mother. The goddess presides over the wedding, but there is no groom, not yet. Cosette is to spend her first year of marriage without ever seeing her new husband. It is a harsh realization, after spending hours of every day falling in love with a mortal man with the sweetest face.

She is taken to her wedding chambers on the back of a wind spirit, her mother keeping a hard grasp on her arm. She is left in a high tower, with a single wide window that her mother pulls a heavy curtain over, blocking out the sunset as night falls.

Fantine dresses her in a soft, thin shift, giving her advice on how to take a man, a god, into her bed. Cosette begins to weep and Fantine, for the first time in Cosette’s memory, takes her into her arms, and soothes her.

She leaves when Cosette’s tears have dried, and the bedchamber is pitch black. Cosette shivers on top of the bedcovers, waiting for her husband with an exhausted anticipation. The later it grows the harder it becomes to keep her eyes open, eventually she falls asleep.

*

Cosette startles awake again when she feels lips on her cheek. She stills when she feels broad hands on her hips, lifting her, and then disappearing again. He pulls the covers over her, tucking her in gently. She feels his weight settle on the other side of the bed, and she waits, for a long time, before realizing he’s gone to sleep.

He won’t touch her tonight, it seems; Cosette relaxes by increments, drifting off again, the last thought in her head that when he takes her, she hopes it isn’t by surprise.

*

The first month goes similarly. Cosette spends her time wondering if tonight is the night he truly makes her his bride, but he never touches her except for the soft, reverent brushes of hands on her torso and lips against her cheek.

During the day, she spends her time reading, writing letters to her father and the love she left behind, sewing and exploring the tower. Some days her mother comes to spend time by her side, and those days are hardest, being constantly reminded of her duties as a wife.

One day, Cosette climbs to the tallest part of the tower, and spends the morning laying across the stone, soaking in the warm sunlight. When she makes her way back down at midday, her footing slips, and she falls from the tower.

Bracing to meet the ground, she cries out when she’s suddenly caught and lifted back up into the big tower window, breeze brushing her skin. 

Safely on ground again, she calls out, “Who’s there?”

A voice tickles her ear. “You don’t remember? I should be insulted. Though I suppose I can forgive you as it was your wedding day.”

“The wind demon!” Cosette cried, smiling delightedly. “Do you have a name? I want to know to whom I owe my life.”

“I am called many things,” the voice giggles, “But you may call me Éponine.”

“Éponine? Why, you’re Marius’ ghost!”

“I am. I have a message from him, to you. It is this: ‘Stay brave and sure, my love, this will not last. I will come for you’.”

Cosette sinks to her knees. “He will save me from this? He will.”

A sharp stinging gust slaps her cheek. “Silly girl! You must save yourself. You cannot last if you waste dreaming of freedom. You have to reach for it.”

“But how?”

“Learn the tower. There are ways for wind to find entrance, somewhere a man might make it through, too.”

 

*

That was Cosette’s task. Over the next several months, she learns every nook and cranny of the tower and draws detailed maps to guide Marius and his compatriots through the winding labyrinth of hallways and staircases. Éponine brings her news of their progress, and the stories of the monster that wreaked havoc on the city, who had appeared the day she wed.

The soldiers think her husband the cause, and even Éponine seemed convinced. Cosette isn’t sure she fully believes a being so gentle with her could cause such terror, but what does she really know about him?

*

In the dead of night, while he sleeps beside her, Cosette slips out of bed and pads to the door of the bedchamber. She opens it to reveal Marius’ pale, smiling face and Enjolras just behind him, a bank torch in hand.

Marius holds her as Courfeyrac throws back the heavy window-covering and Combeferre lights sconces along the walls. Enjolras pulls open the canopy over the bed, to reveal her husband.

He is far from what most would call handsome, with a large nose and ear, a thin mouth, sunken eyes with bruises beneath. His skin, while as dark as every other man’s in the room, is ashen, and she knows from experience his hands were cold and hard like stone. 

Enjolras, and the others, seem shocked.

“R?”

*

Grantaire, for that was his name, the real name of the young god who apparently spends his time amongst mortals to watch and live amongst them, lounges on the bed. He seems to gather amusement the more upset Enjolras becomes.

“Why didn’t you tell us?”

“What business is it of yours who or what I am?”

“We thought R was our friend, and Cosette’s husband was the monster ravaging the town. All the while you’ve sat back, and drank, and watched us make fools of ourselves. Are you utterly useless or did you merely not care?”

“I care,” Grantaire grinds out, rising to his feet. “My plots and reasons are my own, mortal.”

“You couldn’t care enough to bed your wife.” Enjolras spits, approaching him.

Cosette startles when her mother appears in front of them, and she sinks to the ground, Marius lowering with her, holding her tightly still.

“That was to spite me, wasn’t it, godling?” Fantine’s voice reverberates around the circular room. “You knew all along, and you strung out this little game of yours.”

"Did you think I would be so easily fooled? Or did you yourself not recognise your own flesh and blood, Fantine?"

"I know my blood."

"Oh. I know you do. Did you think it that easy? Poor foolish Grantaire, the one god blind enough to miss it, especially with the first year of marriage in the dark, no? You thought I would be so grateful, I the ugliest of us, for a beauty of a bride, that I would take her and bed her and she would bear my children, and you would have sufficient reason to raise her up? Was that it?"

"You men don't get it. The lot of you bed and breed like animals, not caring for your offspring unless they raise themselves up. She was born of my body and my blood, I alone gave her life, and I alone should give her life everlasting."

"YOU'RE NOT DOING IT ALONE." Grantaire roars. "YOU WOULD BIND ME TO MORTAL FLESH AND BONE AND BLOOD. YOU WOULD BREAK ME FOR THE SAKE OF YOUR CHOSEN CHILD."

"Yes!" Fantine bites back, quiet and dangerous as a snake about to strike. "I would ruin you a thousand times for her. You're a disgrace to us all."

Grantaire's laugh makes Cosette's skin to crawl. "I rather think you all a disgrace to the mortals you look so far down upon. How mighty you must feel, with mud so far beneath you, or until it slid out between your legs-"

They don't even see her move, but then the goddess has the young god by the throat. "You know nothing, half-breed."

"I'm no more half breed than she is, and you know it well," he croaks out, and Fantine releases him, looking distraught, studying her daughter's face. They make eye contact for the first time during this whole exchange, Cosette wrapped in Marius' arms, both of them at the goddess' feet.

"Why you?" She asks, as softly as a breeze. "Why not my girl, born of me, in our home? Why were you raised up when you were born in the mud, squalling like a pig."

"I don't know. That's a question for the Fates, I think." Grantaire concedes, almost kindly. Then, he turns to the mortals, ignoring the rest, but kneeling before Cosette, taking her small hand in both of his large, cold, entirely inhuman hands.

"I could love you," he says first. "I think I already do, but I won't hold you to vague wishes and the machinations of higher gods, not if this is what you want."

"What?"

"I could take you, here and now, and I could ensure you receive immortality. It would be so easy, easy as breathing for you, but I won't force it on you. I'm giving you a choice."

Cosette sits quietly for a moment, her mother's presence weighing on all of them. "Have you ever been in love? Truly? Enough that you would give up your longevity?"

"Yes."

"And when that person has gone, or will be gone, what will you do? Will you mourn? Or will you shrug, and tell yourself that our lives down here in the mud, are so short, that you were foolish to dream of sharing it at all?"

Grantaire doesn't answer.

"How long are our lives to you? The blink of an eye? The wing-beat of the gull?"

"Not long enough."

"It's enough for me. This? This is all I've ever known before you, and all of this. Even if it meant living thousands of lives, I wouldn't miss this one with him. I think you know exactly what I mean."

"I do."

"Then you know what my answer has to be."

"I do."

*  
Grantaire stands at the edges of town, leaning against an olive tree. He’s been waiting there for hours, looking into the city, wanting to enter and greet his friends, but fear of Enjolras’ wrath kept him away. How foolish he must look, quaking at the idea of a mortal’s disapproval, but Enjolras isn’t like the rest. There is a divinity to him most of the gods on the mountain lacked.

Enjolras comes to him as the sun was setting, shield slung over one arm, sword by his side. He calls out, “I thought you should know the beast fell, when Marius took Cosette as his wife.”

“I know,” Grantaire answers softly. “That’s not why I’m here.”

Enjolras approaches him, hand of the hilt of his sword. “Then why?”

“I came to ask your forgiveness.”

“A god begging for a mortal’s favour? Is this a trick?”

“No.” Grantaire straightens, coming to him and cupping chin and his cock through his tunic, standing close to him. “I am entirely sincere.”

Enjolras looks him in the eye for a long time, before relaxing in his hold. “I would try you.”

Grantaire smiles softly. “And I would love you, if you would allow it?”

Enjolras smiles back, nodding into his hand.

*

War from across the ocean would tear tentative bonds. Enjolras is determined to go, as is Marius. Éponine, upon Cosette’s request, agrees to go to watch over him. Grantaire goes to the Fates to know their futures, a pit in his stomach. They confirmed his concerns.

"Don't go across the sea," Grantaire tells him, fingers drifting along his waist.

"I must."

"For what? For honor? For glory? What are those worth?"

"For myself."

"If you go, you will die."

"This is fact?"

"It is written by the Fates."

"Then I will die."

Grantaire sits quiet and unmoving for a long moment, and it is times like these that remind Enjolras he really isn't human, as well as he may play it at times.

"I can't protect you there. It's not my people, my lands. I have little power there."

"I'm not asking you to protect me."

"I could... I could come with you."

"Is it written what will happen to you if you do?"

"It matters not."

"It does to me."

"...If. If either of us go, we die. Separate. Together. It does not change."

"Then you aren't to follow me."

"But I must."

"No. I can't ask you to die a mortal death for me."

"You're not asking. I could live a hundred of your lives. I have, in fact, but it will never compare to this one time, that I spent with you. If having you, being by your side, to the end means I meet my end as well...it is a comfort, that we pass into the underworld together. I would give up everything I have for you. My sight, my speech, my soul. None of it is worth a pittance without you."

*

Cosette stands on the bluff, the same where she was married both times, both times changing her life, and watches the ships sail across the sea to some foreign land. She prays to every god who might lend their ear, to watch over them, to bring her Marius home.

Those men have a destiny, and she prays it won’t destroy them.


End file.
